Bill Donahue on Gay Adoption, Homosexual Priests, and Liberal Churches
Filed under Culture, News on October 19th, 2009 by Marcus FrenchAuthor Bill Donahue on the October 15 edition of CBN’s The 700 Club:
Among the more interesting quotes from the clip, Donahue discusses efforts in Massachusetts and California to require Catholic adoption agencies to allow gay couples to adopt children in order to receive taxpayer funds:
We’re not going to allow gay people to adopt children. That’s against nature. It’s against nature’s God. But they won’t stop.
Tags: 700 Club, Bill Donahue, catholic, CBN, Gay Adoption, priests, roman catholic
Possibly Related Posts:
Wow, I just saw this quote from Bill Donahue concerning The Passion of the Christ:
“Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? And I’m not afraid to say it. That’s why they hate this movie. It’s about Jesus Christ, and it’s about truth. It’s about the Messiah.”
Perhaps anti-Semitic?
Marcus,
Are you for or against this video?
Saying that gay rights proponents are “bratty children” and “morally bankrupt,” and “trying to destroy society” I think we’d all agree are inaccurate statements.
A more accurate thing to say would be that gay rights proponents find the Bible to be a fictional document, or at least an unproven document, and do not feel US law should operate on such a document.
Also, the pedophile priests being the hidden leftists in the Catholic church? C’mon…
–Dan
Donahue says too much for me to say that I’m “for” or “against” the video, though I do think he raises some interesting points to consider.
Regarding the Catholic church scandals, according to the U.S. News and World Report:
A priest asked the question:
This is why he says it’s a homosexual problem more than a pedophilia problem.
Regarding your statement that gay rights proponents “do not feel US law should operate on such a document.” Of course they don’t, and your point is? I don’t understand why you think this is relevant to what Donahue was saying.
I don’t think Bill Donahue’s speech here is helpful in any way at all in the dialogue with the LGBT community. As Dan noted above, he seems more interested in caricaturing and badmouthing his opposition than he does in lovingly explaining why he thinks homosexuality is immoral. (E.g., calling gay-rights activists “bratty children” will only exasperate the opposition, not disarm them.)
Also, concerning Marcus’s comment on Donahue’s “secular Jews” statement, I agree that Donahue’s statement quoted above is anti-Semitic. Saying Hollywood is run by Jews has been done before by other anti-Semites. All Donahue does differently here is add the adjective secular. He also assumes that it MUST be anti-Christian motives that drove many people to charge The Passion of the Christ with anti-Semitism. He doesn’t seem to think that there might be some anti-Semitic history that some Jewish critics of the movie were thinking of (such as the passion plays that preceded slaughters of Jews). He just broadly dismisses Hollywood as being run by anti-Christian secular Jews. That type of rhetoric flames passions—it does NOT get people to listen to you. It’s also disgustingly anti-Semitic.
And I think Donahue is doing the same thing in the video above. It’s not that absolutely everything he says is wrong (even Pat Robertson makes correct statement sometimes). It’s just that he’s not couching his language to reflect Jesus’ command that we love our enemies.
Marcus,
I think you are being very unfair calling the Priest molestations a “homosexual problem.” Even if the kids are teenagers, it’s still an authority figure taking advantage of underage teenagers, who are in fact “minors,” despite Donahue’s ignorance of what the term means.
Would you say a male teacher fondling a 14 year old in detention a result of heterosexuality, or something else?
And I mentioned the gay rights proponents’ thoughts on the bible to contrast with Donahue’s blanket statement that they were morally bankrupt.
–Dan
“We’re not going to allow gay people to adopt children. That’s against nature. It’s against nature’s God.”
Yes I’m sure God would much rather have all of the homeless, dying children in the world starve in the streets than to be placed in loving, secure, gay (non-Christian) families. Because just think of what would happen to those poor children if they were brought up by sinners. Don’t let’s forget the fact that every parent on this planet, even the best ones, even the Christian ones are riddled with error. But the children desperately need loving, open arms. How dare we attempt to deny them that. Seriously this guy sounds deranged.
Also, can anyone see the irony (or hypocrisy) of the argument “It’s against nature”?
Bill Donahue is on a television screen transmitted globally from technology which definitely does not grow on trees, yet he claims that two adults being intimate with what nature gave them somehow goes against nature. Everything he likes such as medicine, automobiles, and the internet is ok, yet because most animals don’t engage in homosexual behavior, it somehow becomes horrid to deviate from the “natural norm.”
As for it being against God, he has a scripture from a long time ago where his deity says homosexuality is wrong, so I can’t argue that one.
–Dan
Dan A.
Really now, you can’t think that being on TV is “against nature” in the same way that two men rearing a child is “against nature”?
Also, you understate the scriptural witness against homosexual practice — and completely miss the point of God’s wisdom in joining men with women.
Belle,
My understanding is that there is no shortage of heterosexual households into which kids can be placed and many thousands, in fact, are on waiting lists. Am I wrong on this? Also, isn’t the goal to place kids in the best possible environment?
Dr. Brown,
I actually think 2 men rearing a child is less “against nature” than our current TV technology, and neither of them are wrong, from my point of view. Nature is not an entity that needs it’s “essence” respected. Cooking is against nature too, as animals don’t use heat to prepare food. All I’m saying is that ‘this is against nature,” does not hold any real meaning.
And I think I stated the “homosexuality is against God” statement pretty well. Thousands of years ago, a scripture was written saying a certain deity felt homosexuality was wrong. Ok, an “abomination,” worthy of death, if that’s more accurate.
I think you’ve been so deep into this subject that you now see the problems with homosexuality as self-evident. Other people looking objectively without dogma, can capably see homosexuality as a personal choice without real problems.
Yes I don’t see the “wisdom” of forbidding homosexuality in men who have no attraction to women. I don’t see the wisdom in telling men to marry women they’re not attracted to or just to stay celibate. I do think that men and women [who are heterosexual] go great together, but if a man is gay, it’s less of an option than you might think.
And as for adoption, while there are a large number of heterosexual couples seeking healthy babies, there is also a number of children who are too old, of the wrong race, or having too many health problems to be chosen by most couples looking to adopt. Gay couples have been shown to be much more likely to adopt special needs children that others won’t touch. The empathy probably comes with the territory of being discriminated against for so long.
–Dan
Dan A.,
Obviously, we differ on the “against nature” point, but I have no desire to try to convince you of the wrongness of your position, which is self-evident to me but not to you.
I would simply state that God’s Word is full of wisdom on this subject, and while it is not for me to tell an individual what he or she can or cannot do in his or her private life (unless certain laws are broken), it’s another thing entirely for me to agree with placing a child into a home where, by definition, that child will be deprived of the possibility of either a mother or father and, according to studies, will have a greater tendency towards gender confusion in their own lives.
As for your statement about the higher percentage of gay couples being willing to adopt special needs kids due to greater empathy on their part, I’d be interested to see the hard studies that back this up. I don’t doubt that there are gay couples who deeply love their adopted kids, but that does not mean that they make for the best setting in which that child will be raised.
Actually, globally there is a profound shortage of households willing to adopt, in relation to the vast numbers of homeless children. And children over three years have a drastically reduced chance of ever being adopted. The goal of adoption is first of all to get the children off of the streets, out of the orphanages and into loving, secure homes. And secondly it is to provide stable potential parents with children that they can give their love and their lives to. Can a person honestly go to these impoverished children in their orphanages and tell them that God would PREFER them to remain in abysmal conditions than in a loving secular (gay) family. If there is a god I’m sure he would be much more concerned about the welfare of the children than enforcing archaic religious doctrine. Maybe Bill Donahue and his friends don’t care about those children but there are potential parents who would love to. And thank heavens for the sake of the children that the adoption agencies intent on fulfilling these goals do not refuse potential parents solely on the basis of their sexual preferences!! Because IMHO that truly would be immoral.
Belle has a pretty good point here.
The fact that that there are a lot of children without parents could only mean, A) Not enough couples want to adopt, or B) Couples who want to adopt are being refused children.
In either case, it doesn’t sound like adding gay couples to the mix would hurt. I am in 100% agreement that a heterosexual couple is ideal for raising a child. The problem is, it’s not an “either-or” much of the time. It can be a single mom with a constant rotation of live-in boyfriends, or worse. I’d say that a gay couple is a better deal for a child than an orphanage, any day.
–Dan
Belle,
It’s extremely difficult to adopt kids from overseas, no matter who the parents are. Some of my friends have been working on this for years without success in their own families.
I was speaking of domestic adoptions, which is primarily what is in question in federal and state adoption rulings, and so I do not believe you have addressed my question. I would also encourage you to consider that we’re talking about more than sexual orientation here.
We’re talking about whether a same-sex household, which has no natural ability to bring children into the world and certainly is contrary to God’s established order, is the best place for a child to be raised. It’s one thing to ask if a lesbian can program commuters or nurse patients as well as a straight woman. It’s another thing to ask if two lesbians can take the place of a mom and dad.
So Dan A. and Belle, can you please give me the data that there are not enough heterosexual households ready to adopt kids and so it’s either an orphanage or a gay couple. I’d honestly like to see the data, at the least so we can understand the real issues and facts.
Dan A.,
One more point, since you raised the question of instability in the households. Same-sex male couples are far more unstable in their relationships than heterosexual couples (in several significant ways, as pointed to in most all relevant studies, to the point that they sometimes speak of “open monogamy”). There are also claims that there is more domestic violence with two lesbians than in a heterosexual household. Even if the latter were not true, however, would you decline adoption to gay men simply based on their track record?
Dr. Brown,
I’ll look for some hard data, since your request is fair.
One thing you might consider is that making it legal for gay men (and women) to marry would likely result in greater house stability in the gay community, as well as a lessening of open relationships. I think there should be an effort to place kids in houses with stable relationships (perhaps a couple who has lived together for X amount of years, if unmarried), but the current situation of “You two are gay and in an unstable relationship, so you can’t adopt, and of course we can’t let you get married,” is set up to be unfair.
Dan A.,
The studies I have read indicates that even with “married” gay homes, “open monogamy” is fairly common. Also, even if there was more stability, that would make it moral or right for two men to have sex, nor would it justify redefining marriage, nor would it justify robbing a child of either a mother or father.
Dr. Brown,
I have a question for you concerning households with no male or no female parent involved. Do you believe a household that fails to produce both a male and female parent should not be allowed to have children, since it would be unfair to the child to not have one of those influences?
Michael,
I believe that a household that guarantees that the child will either have no father or no mother (which really applies only to a same-sex household) is not in the best interest of the child. Furthermore, a same-sex household sets wrong models and and guarantees that the child will not be able to see how the opposite sex should be treated. That is quite different from a single-parent household. Follow?
To me, the arguments used here to give credance to homosexuality are leaving out the one thing that is of paramount importance to the human race - procreation. Not even evolution can stand when the race cannot procreate once it has “evolved” to its present state. Homosexuality is a degradation of the emotional nature of the human from narcissistic influences that state as fact that the person and their “feeling” are the center of all behaviors. The leaving of a standard of behavior that includes heterosexuality as the norm and that guarantees the existence of the human race through procreation of children will eventually degrade the species with the result being - no species at all. To place children with people of this narcissistic bent is guaranteed to continue the degradation of the standard and bring to a majority the thought patterns and therefore the behaviors that will eventually cause moral and physical bankruptcy. Could that be the agenda in the first place?